What does Teilhard see as the single underlying phenomenon in cosmic evolution?
Today’s Post
Last week we began to see how Teilhard’s insight into evolution departs significantly from that of traditional science and religion. From science, it broadens the scope of evolution from the biological era to the whole era of existence of the known universe. For religion, it adverts to a process by which the underlying agency of this evolution can be seen as active in each human person, and if acknowledged, can lead us on to, as Karen Armstrong suggests, “a greater possession of ourselves’.
But such a vision requires some sort of ‘metric’, a tangible activity which is active in all stages of the uplifting of the universe. This week we will begin to address Teilhard’s insights into such a metric.
‘Complexification’ as the Essence of Evolution
Teilhard understood the process of evolution in all stages, at all times of the universe to be captured in the increase of complexity of the elements of matter.
The term can be a little slippery. We live in a ‘complicated world’, one in which the complexity of our environment continually invades our calm even while it is adding to our comfort. Who among us does not long for ‘simpler times’? Using the term ‘complexity’ to suggest some sort of improvement in our lot over time can seem somewhat contradictory.
Teilhard uses the term rigorously, as he does with all those he uses to address his insights into the organization and processes of the universe. He simply notes that in the process of evolution
“In each particular element energy is divided into two distinct components: a tangential energy which links the element with all others of the same order (that is to say, of the same complexity and the same centricity) as itself; and a radial energy which draws it towards ever greater complexity and centricity- in other words: forwards.”
He takes note of the scientific concept of evolution that new things come from the connectivity of precedent things, but adds the missing agency: the new things can be more complex than their individual precedents. This should be obvious: if the new things remained at the same level of their precedents, the universe would not evolve. For example, if atoms remained at the elemental organization of their precedent neutrons, protons and electrons, there would be no stars, planets, molecules, cells, or brains in the universe.
He goes on to say
“In its own way, matter has obeyed from the beginning that great law .. to which we shall have to recur time and time again, the law of ‘complexification”.
Explaining Complexity
If we are to differentiate between ‘complicated’ and ‘complex’, a little more description will help. Teilhard’s definition goes well beyond the simple addition of structure, and addresses how complexification can be seen in the universe.
“In every domain, when anything exceeds a certain measurement, it suddenly changes its aspect, condition or nature. The curve doubles back, the surface contracts to a point, the solid disintegrates, the liquid boils, the germ cell divides, intuition suddenly bursts on the piled-up facts…Critical points have been reached, rungs on the ladder, involving a change of state-jumps of all sorts in the course of development. This is the only way in which science can speak of a ‘first instant’.”
In ‘The Phenomenon of Man’ he uses the cell to describe a specific example of ‘complexification’ in the evolution process. With the cell,
“We find a triumph of multiplicity originally organically contained within a minimum of space.”
As Richard Dawkins explains it in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, matter has reached a ‘rung of complexity’ seen in the complex arrangements of amino acids into such products as proteins, DNA and RNA. This arrangement of matter has itself evolved to the point that not only can its components unite in ways which increase their complexity, they can also replicate it.
Dawkins notes that the next step, that seen in the further encasing of this complex molecular machine into a ‘sheath’ of skin which encloses it and increases its sphere of activity. is not such a great step as science has thought. He would seem in agreement with Teilhard, who saw it this way:
“In this cell…what we have is really the stuff of the universe reappearing once again with all its characteristics- only this time it has reached a higher rung of complexity and thus, by the same stroke…advanced still further in interiority, ie in consciousness.”
Next Week
This week we began a look at Teilhard’s groundbreaking concept of ‘complexity’ as the underlying metric that allows the universe’s unfolding into what we are discovering today. He uses the cell as a specific example of how the increase in complexity can be unequivocally seen in the appearance of the cell.
Next week we will expand this example into a more general look at Teilhard’s ‘complexification’ process to see how occurs not only in biological evolution but in our personal and cultural evolution as well.